Well, here's some rather interesting news from the Sony
camp. Sony has originally planned on a November 17 global launch for the
PlayStation 3, but those plans have been completely hosed. It is now reported
that Sony will delay
the launch of the PS3 in Europe until March of 2007. To make matters even
worse, Sony is only going to make available 500,000 total units split between
the United States (400,000) on November 17 and Japan (100,000) on November 11.

"We decided to focus on the Japanese and U.S. markets.
I am so sorry not to be able to answer to all the expectations," said Sony
CEO Ken Kutaragi. Problems
with manufacturing blue laser diodes are putting a serious strain on PS3
production and are part of the reason for the delay and low launch numbers.
Kutaragi went on to say “We've been working hard to try to tackle the problem,
but we see the delay is inevitable."

Mass production of Sony's Cell processor isn't even expected
to start until the end of this month according to Kutaragi. And as a result of
this production snag, Sony has revised its shipping estimates from 4 million
units at the end of 2006 to just 2 million. Bottom line: if you thought you
were going to have trouble getting a PS3 this year, your chances just got much
worse.

"Well, we didn't have anyone in line that got shot waiting for our system." -- Nintendo of America Vice President Perrin Kaplan